How Autonomous Fundraising Is Making the Case for More Human Fundraisers

Our team has been on the road for the last 2 weeks presenting at conferences and sharing results alongside our Autonomous Fundraising innovation partners.

We had hundreds of incredible conversations and continue to hear about how challenging it is to both budget for and hire great fundraising talent. Now, with Virtual Engagement Officers managing real portfolios and surfacing engaged prospects, organizations are discovering something powerful: that AI can not only extend capacity, but help make the case for growing it.

When it comes to AI and workforces, we’re used to hearing questions like “Will AI take human jobs?” But at Givzey | Version2.ai, we have the privilege of seeing things from the perspective of the most advanced technology in fundraising, and what our partners are sharing might surprise you.

We’re now seeing Virtual Engagement Officers make the case for adding new (human) staff.

Daniel Sullivan, VP and Chief Advancement Officer at Parkland Health Foundation put it better than we could. Their VEO, Nicole, has been managing a portfolio of about 1,000 donors over six months. And now that there’s clear engagement data—donors who are giving, responding, and showing real signals of interest—the team is using that portfolio as the basis for a new position request.

“We are using Nicole as a use case and as a justification for new employees. We're using the work that she's done to say that we can hire a gift officer and not cold, and they'll come into a warm portfolio. That's been a really interesting change of events for us — in a way that we've been able to justify to our finance committee, board, and ultimately our system partners for increased investment in personnel. So it's actually having the inverse impact on staffing."

What’s different here is the order of operations. Instead of asking for headcount and hoping it leads to donor engagement, leaders are starting with demonstrated engagement—and building the case for headcount from there. Virtual Engagement Officers are creating clarity around where growth is possible, and have the evidence to support it.

Breakthroughs like this one didn’t happen by chance. They’re the result of rigorous experimentation, close partnership with organizations like Parkland Health Foundation, and a commitment to real innovation—not just adopting new tools, but inventing them. We haven’t yet uncovered all the ways autonomous fundraising will shape the future of our work, but what we’re already seeing makes one thing clear: when technology is guided by intention and built with purpose, it can show us what’s possible when we think beyond the limits of today.